ZNF687 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Furthermore, the three-dimensional (3D) spheroid invasion assay, considered a better mimic of in vivo tumor invasion, revealed that ZNF687-transduced HCC cell lines cultured in Matrigel for 10 days displayed morphologies typical of highly aggressive invasiveness, where there were more outward projections from nearly all individual cells, as opposed to the vector-transduced control cells (Figure 5b).